Exhibit 78: Edvard Munch’s Sketches / A. Boogert’s Color Guide

During my freshman year of college, when I was still a graphic design major, one of my fundamental classes was one involving color theory. This meant all us students had to buy a very specific and expensive black hardcover and spiral-bound art journal and a set of very specific and expensive acrylic paints from the student store. Using these tools, we were expected to mix very precise shades, tints, and hues, lining up the small blocks of colors to form a long, choppy gradient. This was, as I recall, a pain in the ass. I had very little fun in such a controlled, there-is-a-right-and-wrong-way-to-art-type setting, except when we were expected to mimic the art style of an artist we liked. I chose Edvard Munch’s sketches as my inspiration:

But anyway! If anyone would’ve had fun in that color theory class, it’d be the mysterious Dutch artist known as A. Boogert, who, in the 1600s, wrote an 800-page guide on mixing colors that book historian Erik Kwakkel unearthed. Wouldn’t you agree?